Blimey! Just finished listening to Danny Baker's BBC London show - the first after he discovered (not from the BBC) they were going to axe it. Two hours of gale force radio, aimed at the 'pin-headed weasels, the mediocre and the worshippers of the abacus'.

Top stuff - he's also trending all over Twitter, with a host of famous names lining up to insult the Corporation.

Between the optimist & the pessimist
The difference is quite droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut,
The pessimist sees the hole.

Gingerjon and the rest of the cinnamon latte brigade will be spluttering at this thread.

I've listened to Baker and a few times and he's nothing special.

I can confirm 30+ less sales for Scotland vs Italy at Workington, after this afternoons test purchase for the Tonga match, £7.50 is extremely reasonable, however a £2.50 'delivery' fee for a walk in purchase is beyond taking the mickey, good luck with that, it's cheaper on the telly.

I can see why people don't like him, but I'm a big fan - I hear him more on 5Live than the London show. Listened to yesterday's show and he was laying it on a bit thick even for my tastes.

I do agree with Baker's point of middle management slowly suffocating the BBC with decisions about shows they know nothing about though, especially in local radio. On the one hand, I think he went a bit OTT considering it's one show on one local station that's going and loads of local shows are going across the BBC. On the other though, I'm glad someone is standing up for the good radio can do. His rant about spending loads of money sending a massive London bus on tour to see how people feel about a milk bottle theft up the road because it gives a false sense of community was spot on.

No-one has a divine right to a job. I think he has a good point about how it's been done and that the excuses/reasons are a little disingenuous.

In the end whether you like someone or their work is personal taste. People whose job it is to talk endlessly without gaps will appear gobby/self serving/opinionated/smug etc. as they say so much a lot of it will be garbage. I quite like his Saturday Radio 5 show as it happens, but it's hardly ground breaking serious journalism, it's just light entertainment.

Radio presenters can often end up believing their own hype and become true ar**s - the cleanout at Radio 1 by Matthew Bannister in the 1990s has proved in hindsight to be the correct decision, but the DJs that got chopped really went for it and showed themselves up for what they are, people with a lot of mouth but not much behind it.

On a side note and far more sad for me, Mike Harding has been sacked from his radio 2 Folk/Acoustic/Roots show to be replaced by Mark Radcliffe.

No-one has a divine right to a job. I think he has a good point about how it's been done and that the excuses/reasons are a little disingenuous.

In the end whether you like someone or their work is personal taste. People whose job it is to talk endlessly without gaps will appear gobby/self serving/opinionated/smug etc. as they say so much a lot of it will be garbage. I quite like his Saturday Radio 5 show as it happens, but it's hardly ground breaking serious journalism, it's just light entertainment.

This happened a week before Dan's induction into the BBC Radio Hall of Fame. I believe he's planning quite a speech!

I think groundbreaking serious journalism is the last thing he'd want to be accused of. And although his taste in music is often (to be polite) questionable, he's got me into several bands/artists over the years. And a few oddities or rarities that I've sought out, like the stereo mix of 'River deep, Mountain high', Van Morrison singing 'Ringworm' or the awesomely sweary 'Take your Love and shove it' by Joe Pesci.

I remember the days when he and Danny Kelly made Football phone-ins essential listening. Heard 606 since he left? One week's show is pretty much the same as any other week's.

Between the optimist & the pessimist
The difference is quite droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut,
The pessimist sees the hole.

Baker's a bit marmite, I know. But I can't think of any other radio presenter who works the way he does: when he did 6-0-6 (as the original presenter) it wasn't for irate fans to call in and lambast the ref, it was for fans to call in and prove that Bury exists, describe the oddest bit of fan apparel they'd worn and/or identify which players they'd seen on holiday wearing their club kit. So they got rid of him so it could become an identikit soccer phone-in.

The afternoon show on Radio London doesn't sound like owt else I've heard on the BBC. It's the same mixing of barking phone-in topics, random music and long digressions about long-forgotten trivia. It will almost certainly be replaced with something 'community relevant'. So it'll sound like everything else on local radio. Hoo-flucking-rah.

I'd like to say there are plenty of other DJs out there who I don't like and they have the right to be heard too. But there aren't because radio is getting more and more and more generic and tedious. The whole point should be variety and interest but instead we have bland followed by bland.

I don't get the references to media circles, Groucho etc. Can someone explain them?

(Oh, and Mike Harding being kicked off Radio 2 is a bigger outrage and I have signed an actual petition about that. I put down my latte so I'd get my name right.)

Dan's was one of the few shows where the music wasn't automatically generated by playlist software. Which is why the Zappa estate keeps getting a steady trickle of income from his using 'Peaches en Regalia' as a background track.

Between the optimist & the pessimist
The difference is quite droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut,
The pessimist sees the hole.

I remember when he presented 'Pets Win Prizes'. It was absolute tripe. Some 'pinhead weasel' at the BBC must have given him that job. He's done pretty well over the years out of the people he's now slagging off. I don't dislike him, but he is being incredibly self-indulgent. I wonder if he'll look back and regret 'doing a DLT' in years to come.

I remember when he presented 'Pets Win Prizes'. It was absolute tripe. Some 'pinhead weasel' at the BBC must have given him that job. He's done pretty well over the years out of the people he's now slagging off. I don't dislike him, but he is being incredibly self-indulgent. I wonder if he'll look back and regret 'doing a DLT' in years to come.

He's gone on record as saying that it never worked out for him as a TV presenter. Radio's what he does best.

There's a lot of presenters who'll have to nick their act off someone else until he gets back on the airwaves. His agent's having words with TalkSport (a reunion with Danny Kelly?) apparently.

Between the optimist & the pessimist
The difference is quite droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut,
The pessimist sees the hole.